Hey, there! Log in / Register

Cleveland Circle pothole bad enough to trigger airbags

Pothole on Chestnut Hill Avenue

Julio Salado reports that when his car hit a pothole on Chestnut Hill Avenue between Applebee's and the circle this morning, the jolt was enough to trigger his car's airbags to deploy and send him to St. Elizabeth's with a bruised arm. In addition, the force of the airbag's expansion ripped his jacket.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

a $1,000 plus mess.

up
Voting closed 0

Besides replacing the airbag itself, the control module needs to be reset, a new impact sensor needs to be installed, and in some cases the seatbelts need to be replaced as well. definitely a few hours' worth of labor. One could potentially do it all on one's own with proper mechanical training, a well-stocked toolbox and about $500 (seen it done), but better to leave it to the pros when it comes to vehicle safety systems.

up
Voting closed 0

All the worst roads in greater Boston are controlled by DCR. Turn them over to MassDOT or the local DPW!

up
Voting closed 0

Chestnut Hill Avenue is a DCR road?

up
Voting closed 0

This is the point at which I get to make my usual comment about the body politic knowing at least a little bit about which part of government does what (for which I have been lambasted in the past). Admittedly, this area is a tricky one (Brookline/Boston border, T tracks in the middle of the road, and a DCR park just west of there), but I would be very surprised to learn that DCR has any responsibility for Chestnut Hill Ave.

up
Voting closed 0

up
Voting closed 0

Yup. The only DCR roads in that area are Chestnut Hill Drive/Thomas More Road, and Chestnut Hill Driveway.

http://web.mit.edu/jfc/www/maps/towns/Boston.gif

up
Voting closed 0

Chestnut Hill Ave is under Boston Public Works jurisdiction.

up
Voting closed 0

Official response:

We should all be stating as a policy that the City of Boston and the state Highway Department have no responsibility or intent of providing "safe" winter driving opportunities on any of our streets or highways. This is impossible! Any public way where we do road maintenance is strictly to provide hourly work for city and/or state employees. If anyone wants to drive our streets in winter they should assume variable and dangerous conditions, and know they are doing it at there own risk.

Frankly, I am tired of our dedicated team wasting valuable time addressing the less than .05% of all drivers for whose well-being we give a flying fuck. Sometimes during winter in Boston you can safely drive, and I do it when my driver has the day off. This is not one of those winters! We should not spend time debating drivers with poor judgement and unrealistic expectations, and stick with [the staffer]'s recommendation that they find other transportation. If someone is completely depending on a car for year-round transportation, they are living in the wrong city.

up
Voting closed 0

Bravo, I say!

up
Voting closed 1

I live to serve.

up
Voting closed 0

I don't like to criticize agencies like the DCR or MA Highway, or local DPWs for most things, since I've seen operation plans and work deployment schedules and know for the most part these guys are doing the most with what they have, and others wouldn't be able to do a better job but....

Potholes should be an easy fix. There is a company called Riley Brothers, they are an exvacating company who works for National Grid filling up large holes from gas work. These guys come out, and hard patch holes to perfection. It takes them 5 minutes to patch a 5 x 5 foot hole with a minimum amount of hard top. I have no idea why Municipal public works departments don't do the same thing with large pot holes that seem to go untreated for weeks at a time. I can't imagine the cost is anything out of the ordinary compared to snow removal and other large DPW functions.

I understand there are always going to be small pot holes and things that can't be done, but this seems like an easy fix. That being said, I don't travel a lot to other cold cities during the winter, but a friend of mine was just down in New Jersey outside NYC and said it is 100X worse there.

up
Voting closed 0

I wonder if finding them is part of the problem? Is it pretty much "if you see something, say something" case-by-case thing, or do they have DPW trucks constantly driving around searching for potholes to fix?

up
Voting closed 0

There is an app you can get on your phone called Citizen's Connect that released by the City of Boston for exactly this type of thing

http://www.cityofboston.gov/doit/apps/citizensconnect.asp

up
Voting closed 0

I was going to make a snide comment about the "difficulty" of finding potholes in Boston, but then I realized that it would actually require DPW workers to (a) leave the yard and (b) give a shit, and realized that lack of knowledge probably is a big part of the problem.

up
Voting closed 0

I think I saw this first here on UHub: http://www.cityofboston.gov/doit/apps/streetbump.asp , but haven't heard anything recently. It's an app that uses accelerometers on users' smartphones to detect and report potholes and other big bumps in the road. Interesting that on banner on the apps' home page, http://streetbump.org/ , one of the random reported spots that comes up is on Chestnut Hill Ave, although it seems to be further West than this one.

up
Voting closed 0

Those kevlar pothole bags they were going to use this winter. Anyone see one?

up
Voting closed 0